ITU-T Handbook on Telecommunications and

Disaster MitigationKeith Mainwaring

ITU Consultantkeith.mainwaring@yahoo.com

Istanbul, Turkey,11 December 2012

“Workshop on Disaster Relief Systems, Network Resilience and Recovery”

(Istanbul, Turkey, 11 December 2012)

Contents

• Trends in natural disasters• Case studies• United Nations disaster mitigation activities• Regional disaster mitigation initiatives• ITU activities related to disaster mitigation• International Amateur Radio Union (IARU)• Other standardisation activities• Conclusions and Recommendations

Trends in Natural Disasters

Impact on countries in different states of development (1991 – 2005)

Source: “A year of living dangerously – a review of natural disasters in 2010”; The Brookings Institution – London School of Economics Project on Internal Displacement; April 2011.

Risk

Hazard x VulnerabilityCapacity

Risk ∝

Climate change and environmental degradation

• 300,000 deaths annually• 325 million people affected• Human displacement– 36 million people displaced by sudden-onset

natural disasters in 2008

Sources: Global Humanitarian Forum Human Impact report – Climate Change 2009; and “Monitoring disaster displacement in the context of climate change – Findings of a study by the United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs and the Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre”, September 2009, http://www.internal-displacement.org.

Global estimates of newly displaced people

Source: “Global estimates 2011 – People displaced by natural hazard-induced disasters” IDMC, June 2012

The causes of disasters 1980- 2007

Hazards• Natural – earthquake, landslide, tsunami, cyclones, flood, drought.

• Biological – disease epidemics (such as SARS, influenza and cholera),

pest infestations. • Technological – chemicals, radiological agents, transport accidents.– some 10,000 people were killed and 500,000 between

2000 and 2011– Chernobyl accident affected 8 million people

• Societal – conflicts, population displacement, acts of terrorism.

Case Studies

Case studies

• Japan earthquake & tsunami 11 March 2011• Hurricane Katrina 29 August 2005• Indian Ocean tsunami 26 December 2004• “9/11” New York City 11 September 2001• Some observations

Some Observations

Some observations• Avoiding congestion

– Encourage alternative means of communication– Reduce call hold times– Reduce call quality– Reassign resources to telephony– New network architecture

• Autonomous power supply critical• Install equipment in safer locations• Avoid use of aerial facilities• Geographical disperse critical equipment such as

authentication servers

Media diversity important

• Radio– BBC World Service 188 million weekly (2009)– USA 241.2 million weekly (2011) 93% of

population

• Social Media– Twitter 140 million users (March 2012)– Facebook 900 million users (2012)

Accessibility

• Elderly and disabled vulnerable• Need mechanisms to inform the deaf, blind

and illiterate– Text-to-speech– Text-to-sign language– Talking books

• Multi-lingual information

Lead times

• Time between detection of an event indicative of a disaster and the disaster itself are those in which early warnings can be provided.

• Lead times vary enormously depending upon the type of threat – tens of seconds for earthquakes, – minutes for tornadoes, – minutes to hours for tsunamis, – hours to days for volcanic eruptions, – hours to weeks for hurricanes, – weeks to months for droughts, and – years for long term climatic events such as El Nino and climate change.

United Nations Disaster Mitigation

Activities

UN Disaster Mitigation Activities

• UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA)

• UN International Strategy for Disaster Reduction (UNISDR)

• World Meteorological Organization (WMO)• World Health Organization (WHO)• UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA)• World Bank• Internal Displacement Monitoring Centre (IDMC)

Istanbul, Turkey,11 December 2012 23

Regional Disaster Mitigation

Initiatives

Regional initiatives

• Asian Disaster Preparedness Center (www.adpc.net)

• Association of South East Asian Nations – ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and

Emergency Response (AADMER)– ASEAN Coordinating Centre for Humanitarian

Assistance (AHA Centre)

• ….

International Telecommunications

Union Activities Related to Disaster

Mitigation

ITU

• ITU Objectives• Tampere Convention• ITU Framework for Cooperation in

Emergencies (IFCE)• ITU-T Recommendations• ITU-R Recommendations and Reports• ITU-D Reports

Istanbul, Turkey,11 December 2012 27

ITU-T Recommendations

• Numbers• Emergency Telecommunications Service (ETS)• International Emergency Preference Scheme

(IEPS)• Common Alerting Protocol (CAP)• Alerting object identifier• NGN service restoration• Outside plantIstanbul, Turkey,11 December 2012 28

International Amateur Radio Union

(IARU) Activities

International Amateur Radio Union (IARU)

• Over 160 national amateur radio society members• Represents more than 2 million radio “hams” many of whom have

undertaken special training in emergency communications• Member of ITU-R and ITU-D• “Amateur Service” defined in ITU Radio Regulations• IARU promotes the use of amateur radio as a means of providing relief in

the event of natural disasters • Amateur radio is a valuable asset during an emergency as communication

links are independent of vulnerable infrastructure and immune to overload

• Amateur Service is integrated into the emergency preparedness systems in a number of countries

Other Standardisation Organizations

Other standardisation activities

• CEPT• ETSI EMTEL• W3C Disaster Management• OASIS emergency management committee• 3GPP / GSMA

Conclusions and Recommendations

• To be defined.

Istanbul, Turkey,11 December 2012 33

Thank You!